Author: Tony Xavier

To re-take or not to re-take the CAT

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At this juncture, it doesn’t take a magician to see what kind of anxieties aspirants might be going through. A small fraction of you have got the calls you want and are excited and nervous about the impending interviews or the results of the same, others have  GD-PI calls but are not sure whether the b-schools that have given them the calls are really worth it, and still others knowing that this year is done have hit snooze-mode till June. This post will primarily deal with the dilemma of those in between — to re-take or not to re-take the CAT. It is not an easy call to take but your task will become easy if you ask yourself the right questions and give the most honest answers you can to them.

Work With Us

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As most of my students would know, I have been with IMS for close to two decades now. But I started teaching for aptitude tests way back in the past, right after my graduation, while preparing for the CAT a second time around. At the time, I felt that the teaching stint had a great role to play in my cracking the CAT: it made my thought process very clear when faced with a problem, since one has to have the utmost clarity of thought to explain a problem in such a way that many students understand the solution right away. Also, one is always looking to find better, cleaner or, to put it simply, more elegant solutions to problems. Over the past year, I have interacted with a lot of students across the country who are readers of the blog, so I was wondering if any of you might be interested in working in the Learning Technology Department that works with me. Not only me, but you will also have access to all the …

How to approach the Indian B-School Personal Interview

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Now that we are done with the Achievers Workshops, there is more breathing space to do some writing that captures the essence of the sessions at the NAW. The IIM interview season has already started, and aspirants will be trying to get as many insights as they can right from how to dress for the interview to how to reduce India’s fiscal deficit without affecting our growth! Amidst all of this clutter, how does one go in with the right perspective? What is the state of mind with which one should approach an interview? How you approach an interview will make all the difference.

Why every WAT-GD-PI call-getter should write the IIM-B SOP

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One of the things about preparing for a b-school personal interview, especially that of an old IIM, is that one struggles to find a structure to prepare for what can potentially be the most random 20 minutes of one’s life. I am sure my previous post, despite my intentions, would have scared readers rather than reassured them. So, let us see how you can bring some structure into your PI Prep.

How to prepare for WAT-GD-PI – I

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Now that the XAT is over, the time to dive fully into WAT-GD-PI prep has come. But how does one go about it? It all seems like a vast sea with no beginning and no end. A single post covering all three — WAT, GD & PI — will be unwieldy, to say the least, so I will do a series of posts that will help you kick-start your prep for the second stage.

A timing strategy for the XAT

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  I have always preferred a test without sectional time limits since it tests a crucial quality required for management — optimizing resources to achieve maximum return on investment. In this case, the resources are your own skills, and the investment is your time.  So, how does one go about using the 170 minutes on the XAT?

How to crack XAT Decision Making – Part I

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One of the most tedious and inscrutable sections that you will find across all management entrance tests, Decision Making has been the nemesis of many a XAT aspirant. A lot of factors contribute towards DM possibly being the biggest stumbling block on the XAT. But none is bigger than the fact the amount of time any test-taker would have spent preparing for DM when compared to any other section is minuscule. This coupled with the dislike and unease most aspirants have towards reading, and the extremely subjective nature of questions ensures that DM ends up becoming the deal-breaker as far as the XAT is concerned.